IC-NRLF 


Photograph  by  Robert  H.  Davis 


JOSEPH  HERGESHEIMER 

THE     MAN     AND     HIS     BOOKS 


BY  LLEWELLYN  JONES 

Literary  Editor  of  The  Chicago 
Evening  Post 


New  York   ALFRED  •  A  •  KNOPF      Mcmxxi 


COPYEIGHT,  1920,  BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  INC. 


First  Printed,  October,  19W 
Reprinted.  November,  1920 
Reprinted,  December,  1921 


FEINTED   IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    Of   AMERICA 


JOSEPH  HERGESHEIMER 


THE  salient  fact  about  Joseph  Hergesheimer  is  that 
he  cannot  be  predicted.  While  his  fellow  American 
novelists  —  and  the  majority  of  his  English  fellows,  too 
—  run  in  orderly  grooves,  make  social  studies  of  labour, 
the  church,  or  what  not,  Mr.  Hergesheimer,  intent  only 
upon  those  passions  and  colours  that  appeal  to  the  heart 
and  that  may  be  found  everywhere,  wanders  where  he 
lists.  He  refuses  to  impoverish  the  soil  of  any  one  field 
of  human  life  by  too  continuous  planting. 

And  perhaps  that  fact  is  not  unconnected  with  the 
fact  that  Mr.  Hergesheimer  is  the  only  contemporary 
American  novelist  who  is  treated  by  English  critics  with 
out  their  two  most  usual  manners  toward  American 
novelists:  patronage  or  a  very  curt  nod  in  passing. 
From  Edmund  Gosse  down  the  English  critics  find  him 
important  as  well  as  exciting:  they  forget  that  he  is 
a  foreigner. 

Mr.  Hergesheimer's  position  as  the  foremost  American 
novelist  has  been  gained,  against  the  handicap  of 

[3] 

46327i 


tragically  preoccupied  times,  since  the  middle  of  1914 
when  his  first  novel,  "  The  Lay  Anthony,"  was  pub 
lished.  It  has  been  gained  solely  through  the  brilliance 
and  worth  of  his  work,  without  any  claque,  without  ad 
ventitious  publicity,  without  the  running  start  of  being 
in  any  way  "  in  the  game." 

"  The  Lay  Anthony  "  was  published  in  August,  1914, 
and  the  present  writer  was  the  first,  if  not  the  only 
commentator  on  that  book  who  prophesied  by  its  lights 
of  the  future  of  its  author.  And  of  Mr.  Hergesheimer 
prophecy  is  still  in  order:  is  in  fact  outstripped  by 
each  of  his  succeeding  productions.  And  as  he  has 
still  to  reach  the  peak  of  his  power  so  he  has  still  to 
reach  his  ultimate  public:  for  there  is  yet  a  part  of  the 
American  reading  audience  that  is  not  aware  that  Mr. 
Hergesheimer  is  our  most  brilliant  fiction  writer. 

The  first  demand  that  the  larger  public  makes  upon  a 
novelist  is  that  his  personal  life  shall  be  as  romantic 
as  his  novels.  Fortunately  Mr.  Hergesheimer  can  meet 
that  demand  —  certainly  any  one  who  can  recognize  ro 
mance  when  he  sees  it  will  recognize  it  in  Mr.  Herges- 
heimer's  life.  Descended  from  an  old  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  family,  brought  up  in  a  Presbyterian  home,  he 
spent  a  boyhood  in  which  ill  health  justified  a  large 
measure  of  idleness,  read  the  paper-bound  love  stories  to 
which  his  mother  used  to  subscribe,  later  read  "  Ouida," 
made  a  very  poor  showing  at  school,  and  at  seventeen 
entered  the  Philadelphia  Academy  of  Fine  Arts  to  study 
painting  —  but  did  not  study  it  too  persistently. 

At  twenty-one  he  was  left  some  money  and,  instead 
of  investing  it,  went  to  Italy.  He  lived  in  Venice  until 

W 


his  funds  were  gone,  and  then  he  had  to  come  home. 
In  a  humorously  detached  account  of  his  career  which 
he  contributed  to  The  Bookman  Mr.  Hergesheimer  has 
told  us  that  he  then  began  to  keep  "  low  company  "  and 
late  hours  —  or  early  ones,  coming  home,  he  confesses, 
"  in  the  cadaverous  trolley  cars  of  dawn."  He  suddenly 
tired  of  the  scenes  which  this  sort  of  life  presented,  and 
determined  upon  a  change  —  a  walking  tour. 

At  its  outset  he  met  a  woman  novelist  who  requested 
his  aid  in  her  proof  reading.  His  dislike  for  the  fiction 
to  which  he  was  thus  introduced  eventuated  in  his  de 
termination  to  write  fiction  himself.  His  first  attempt 
was  a  failure,  but  he  had  found  what  he  wanted  to  do, 
and  set  about  doing  it  in  earnest.  Retiring  with  a 
dilapidated  typewriter  and  reams  of  paper  to  a  village 
in  the  Virginia  mountains,  he  wrote  and  rewrote  one 
story  from  start  to  finish  twenty  times;  part  of  it  a 
hundred  times.  Fourteen  years  later,  having  worked 
incessantly  in  the  interval,  he  sold  his  first  tale.  Since 
then  he  has  not  looked  back.  For  some  years  he  and  his 
wife  have  lived  in  an  old  stone  house  in  West  Chester, 
Pennsylvania.  His  home  overlooks  beautiful  country. 
There  are  Airedales  on  his  lawn  and  rockbass  not  too 
far  distant. 

To  have  achieved  sucK  a  life  as  that  is  romantic,  and 
Mr.  Hergesheimer's  way  of  admitting  it  is  to  say  to  in 
terviewers  that  "  there,  in  common  with  most  creative 
writers  driven  either  by  exterior  fact  or  inner  necessity, 
continuously  at  their  labour,  his  life  and  work  are  sin 
gularly  without  romantic  details." 

Undoubtedly  the  length  of  his  self-imposed  probation 
[5] 


and  the  three  years  of  comparative  neglect  before  the 
public  awakened  to  find  him  already  one  of  the  biggest 
figures  in  the  literary  landscape  was  directly  due  to  his 
own  artistic  sincerity.  As  from  boyhood  he  had  insisted 
upon  doing  what  he  wanted  to  do,  and  nothing  else,  so 
in  his  writing  he  utterly  ignored  the  market.  He  was  an 
artist  first,  and  a  tradesman  not  at  all.  In  a  letter  he 
even  speaks  with  an  accent  almost  of  surprise  that  one 
publication  takes  from  him  stories  which  he  has  written 
in  accordance  with  his  own  feelings  and  standards  of 
excellence. 

And  the  essential  romance  of  his  life  must  be  that  do 
ing  what  he  willed,  following  his  own  artistic  inclina 
tions,  he  has  come  out  head  and  shoulders  above  any  of 
those  writers  who  anxiously  follow  the  market  —  the 
sex  market  or  the  ethics  market  —  who  set  up  as  ethical 
teachers  or  exploit  "  the  masses  "  in  books  whose  sub 
jects  condemn  their  writing  to  be  done  on  sand. 

HIS  SUBJECTS 

Dwelling,  for  the  most  part,  on  the  American  scene, 
Mr.  Hergesheimer  has  written  of  the  past  of  this  coun 
try  with  a  glowing  beauty,  a  wealth  of  colour  that  makes 
a  picture  fresh  or  even  totally  new  to  most  of  us.  With 
characteristic  ingratitude,  or  perhaps  more  nearly,  with 
characteristic  carelessness  and  one-sidedness  we  have  ac 
cused  him  of  writing  "  costume  novels."  Well,  if  they 
were  only  that  they  would  be  the  best  of  their  kind. 
Never  have  the  Colonial  days  of  Pennsylvania,  the  "  train- 
brigade  "  and  early  industrial  days  of  America  and  the 
later,  more  perturbed  and  introspective  days  beginning 

[6] 


with  the  eighties  been  more  livingly  pictured  than  by  Mr. 
Hergesheimer  in  "  The  Three  Black  Pennys."  Never  was 
Salem  more  gloriously  vibrant  and  alive  in  reality  than 
it  is  in  the  magic  reflection  of  it  in  "  Java  Head."  And 
the  same  magic  that  gleams  through  these  books  makes 
vivid,  too,  the  small  town  life  in  which  Tony  Ball,  the 
"  Lay  Anthony,"  passed  his  days.  It  colours  the  Vir 
ginia  highlands  which  are  the  background  of  "  Mountain 
Blood  "  and  of  two  of  the  seven  tales  characterized  by 
and  entitled  "  The  Happy  End." 

It  is  only  when  one  considers  his  stories  one  after  the 
other  that  one  realizes  what  an  extraordinarily  large 
part  of  the  total  American  scene  Mr.  Hergesheimer  has 
put  into  his  novels.  From  the  days  when  Pennsylvania 
was  a  province,  when  the  real  capital  of  America  was  still 
London,  until  the  America  of  the  Great  War,  and  from 
Salem  to  San  Francisco  Mr.  Hergesheimer  has  painted 
aspect  after  aspect  of  our  national  life.  And  his  magic, 
the  vividness  of  these  pictures  is  gained  by  the  most 
scrupulous  writing  and  the  most  patient  research.  If 
the  reader  of  "  Java  Head  "  feels,  at  the  end,  not  that 
he  has  read  about  old  Salem  but  that  he  has  lived  there, 
if  the  odour  of  Chinese  cargoes  almost  lingers  in  his 
physical  nostrils  and  if  his  eye  is  filled  with  peacock  blue 
and  other  royal  colours  and  dazzled  with  the  reflections 
of  silk,  it  is  because  Mr.  Hergesheimer  is  both  a  stylist 
who  knows  his  business  and  a  historian  who  knows  his 
facts.  Before  he  wrote  about  Salem,  he  has  told  the  read 
ers  of  The  Bookman,  he  read  over  ninety-five  books  on 
the  history  of  the  part.  Lest  the  reader  think  the  labour 
of  reading  those  books  more  germane  to  a  treatise  than 

[7] 


to  magic  let  him  hearken  to  a  critic  of  Mr.  Hergesheimer 
(Mr.  H.  W.  Boynton)  writing  in  the  same  publication: 

"  As  for  his  knowledge  of  place,  there  we  come  to  a 
bit  of  mystery.  He  could  solve  it  in  a  word,  but  I  don't 
find  that  he  has,  thus  far.  His  saturation  with  the  atmo 
sphere  of  the  Pennsylvania  of  the  early  '  iron-masters ' 
had  a  plain  enough  basis  in  his  birth  there  and  descent 
from  a  foundryman.  But  how  does  he  come  to  know 
Salem,  in  Massachusetts,  with  its  altogether  different 
stock,  and  traditions,  and  colour  of  the  past?  His 
bibliography  of  ninety-five  titles  (which  the  editor  of  The 
Bookman  lacked  courage,  or  faith,  to  print  in  as  a 
whole)  explains  his  information;  but  what  inner  sympa 
thy  enabled  him  to  distil  a  human  story  out  of  it?  " 

That  is  just  the  point.  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  atmo 
sphere  is  always  rich  and  every  person  and  object  in  it 
is  always  firmly  planted,  well  drawn,  and  in  the  round 
—  you  never  feel  that  his  characters  are  representations, 
they  have  corporeal  reality.  That  is  the  part  of  his 
work,  perhaps,  which  has  excited  most  wonder.  But 
it  is  the  part  only.  His  real  secret,  as  Mr.  Boynton 
says,  is  in  his  sympathy:  he  can  create  real  people. 

And  the  most  salient  characteristic  of  all  Mr.  Herge- 
sheimer's  people  is  that  they  are  alive  and  strongly  in  re 
action  against  their  surroundings.  The  vividness  of  their 
costumes  and  the  colour  of  their  backgrounds  are 
matched  by  the  fire  and  the  vividness  within.  More  than 
the  characters  of  any  other  American  novelist  they  live 
and  are  conscious  of  living,  pressing  hard  against  their 
fate  whether  it  be  tragic  or  joyful.  Although  a  book 
of  his  shorter  stories  is  called  "  The  Happy  End  "  Mr. 

[8] 


Hergesheimer  has  never  indulged  in  a  conventionally 
happy  ending.  But  even  where  his  endings  are  tragic 
they  are  happy  in  that  they  make  us  sympathize  with  a 
soul  which  has  tasted  every  last  individual  possibility 
implicit  in  its  fate.  And,  in  his  first  book,  "  The  Lay 
Anthony,"  and  returning  in  a  measure  in  the  experi 
ences  of  Gerrit  Ammidon's  high  caste  Chinese  wife  ma 
rooned  in  Salem,  and  more  explicitly  in  "  Linda  Con 
don,"  there  is  the  insistence,  an  insistence  so  keen  as  to 
force  the  reader  into  assuming  it  to  be  a  very  personal 
expression  of  the  author's  intuition,  that  the  self-con 
scious  individual  can  at  once  be  mixed  up  in  the  wildest 
adventures  or  in  the  most  hopeless  mundane  tangle,  and 
yet  be  thousands  of  miles  away  from  it  all,  so  that  an 
apparently  shiftless  but  cheerful  and  mundane-minded 
youth  like  the  Lay  Anthony  can,  at  need,  walk  right 
through  the  walls  of  life,  throw  his  body  recklessly  away 
at  the  bidding  of  his  soul. 

THE  LAY  ANTHONY 

But  enough  of  general  statements.  Let  us  look  at  the 
books  themselves.  "  The  Lay  Anthony,"  the  first  of 
Mr.  Hergesheimer's  books,  has  recently  been  revised  and 
republished,  and  at  that  time  one  American  newspaper 
reviewer  expressed  a  liking  for  it  as  great  as  his  liking 
for  any  of  the  author's  subsequent  work.  On  the  other 
hand  I  have  heard  one  reader  condemn  the  book  as  sen 
timental,  but  his  judgment  is  based,  undoubtedly,  on  a 
misunderstanding  of  the  author's  intentions.  The  story 
concerns  a  youth  who  is,  in  the  quite  technical  sense  of 
that  term,  "  pure,"  and  who  falls  in  love  with  a  girl  in 

[9] 


that  headstrong,  heart-strong  and  yet  non-sensual  way 
that  is  actually  the  most  typical  form  of  the  first  love 
of  those  whose  spirits  are  fine  —  even  though  such 
an  experience  as  that  is  the  only  touchstone  for  a  fine 
ness  which  otherwise  is  dumb,  overlaid  by  vulgarity  of 
education,  of  surroundings,  of  acquired  conduct. 

This  was  the  case  of  Tony  Ball.  He  could  play 
wonderful  baseball,  he  could  run  an  automobile  and 
could  go  through  rather  disastrous  motions  that  were 
intended  to  repair  automobiles,  but  he  could  not  talk, 
his  dancing  was  a  purgatory  for  all  concerned  as  par 
ticipants  or  spectators,  and  he  associated  with  the  riff 
raff  of  the  town  when  he  was  not  cleansing  himself,  un 
knowingly,  from  their  contacts  by  long  nights  spent  in 
the  open  country  alone.  Such  a  youth,  with  the  white 
seed  of  nobility,  of  eventual  spiritual  flowering,  hidden 
unsuspected  under  the  grimiest  of  coatings,  is  more  typi 
cal  of  youth  in  general  than  youth  in  general  permits 
us  to  suspect.  Tony  falls  in  love  in  the  mediaeval  way, 
in  the  way  of  Dante  and  Petrarch,  and  his  creator  un 
folds  a  tale  in  which  contemporary  American  life  in  all 
its  materialism  and  disillusionment  and  moral  poverty 
on  the  one  hand,  and  this  love  on  the  other  hand,  walk 
side  by  side,  intertwine  in  a  pattern  of  circumstance,  but 
never  mingle.  And  the  book  ends  in  melodrama  —  but 
the  melodrama  is  only  a  noisy  background  for  the  silent- 
ness  and  steadfastness  of  Tony's  love. 

Yes,  upon  going  back  again  to  that  tale  I  do  not  won 
der  that  some  readers  will  always  give  it  its  niche  apart. 
For  even  if  there  be  things  in  it  which  the  older  Mr. 
Hergesheimer  or  his  critics  may  regard  as  blemishes  there 

[10] 


is  in  it  also  that  glow  and  that  exaltation  that  are  in  a 
young  author's  first  book — they  are  there  as  characteris 
tically  and  by  as  divine  a  right  as  they  are  in  a  lad's  first 
love. 

MOUNTAIN  BLOOD 

Mr.  Hergesheimer's  next  novel,  "  Mountain  Blood," 
was  probably  the  first  realistic  story  ever  written  about 
that  paradise  of  the  romanticists,  the  Virginia  mountain 
regions.  Superficially  it  differs  altogether  from  "  The 
Lay  Anthony."  For  the  perhaps  esoteric  interest  of  the 
first  book  we  have  a  more  general  appeal,  moral  rather 
than  spiritual.  Whereas  Tony  Ball  lived  an  experience 
that  was  beyond  time  and  space,  Gordon  Makimmon,  the 
middle-aged  stage  driver  between  Stenton  and  his  native 
village  of  Greenstream,  high  in  the  mountains,  lives  a 
life  that  is  utterly  cramped  by  limitations  as  galling  and 
immovable  as  the  mountains  that  surround  his  home. 
The  village  is  dominated  by  two  men,  Simmons,  a  store 
keeper,  and  Pompey  Hollidew,  a  "  capitalist,"  who 
squeeze  the  surrounding  country  dry.  Loans  at  iniqui 
tous  interests,  mortgages,  debt-traps  into  which  the  un 
sophisticated  mountaineers  are  led  like  sheep  are  their 
technique.  Gordon  owns  a  "  place "  upon  which  he 
lives  with  his  sister  Clare,  who  is  dying  of  consumption. 
Thinking  only  of  her  comfort  and  pleasure  he  has  bought 
things  from  Simmons,  had  them  charged,  and  paid  a 
little  on  account  when  he  thought  of  it.  On  an  eve 
ning  Lettice  Hollidew  is  coming  home  from  her  term 
at  school,  and  Buckley  Simmons,  the  storekeeper's  son, 
is  also  a  passenger.  Gordon  Makimmon  punishes  Buck- 


ley  for  an  insult  to  the  girl,  and  as  a  result  gains  her 
friendship  but  is  called  by  Simmons  to  pay  his  full  ac 
count  —  which  call  is  simply  the  preliminary  to  selling 
them  out.  Rather  than  pay  even  what  he  can  manage 
Gordon  uses  the  money  in  a  vain  endeavour  to  save  his 
sister's  life,  fails,  and  is  sold  out: 

"  The  seeds  of  revolt,  of  instability,  which  Clare  and 
a  measure  of  worldly  position,  of  pressure,  had  held 
in  abeyance,  germinated  in  his  disorganized  mind,  his 
bitter  sense  of  injustice  and  injury.  He  hardened,  grew 
defiant  .  .  .  the  strain  of  lawlessness  brought  so  many 
years  before  from  warring  Scotch  highlands  rose  bright 
and  troublesome  in  him." 

It  is  the  harvest  of  that  germination  that  is  told  in 
"  Mountain  Blood."  With  neither  the  intellectual  capac 
ity  rightly  to  orient  himself  to  the  situation  nor  further 
reason  for  self-restraint,  all  Makimmon's  forces  are 
turned  to  ways  which  eventuate  in  evil. 

Perhaps  the  real  triumph  of  the  story  is  Mr.  Herges- 
heimer's  discovery  that  a  mountain  village  is  not  neces 
sarily  the  abode  of  people  who  in  stature  or  emotions 
are  "  villagers."  Not  only  do  we  see  in  Makimmon  a 
man  whose  forces  are  too  great  for  his  surroundings,  who 
is  bound  to  do  evil  by  the  very  fact  that  he  lives  and 
must  collide  with  others,  but  in  Meta  Beggs,  the  school 
teacher  who  hates  the  country,  we  have  a  veridical  and 
well  drawn  woman  of  the  kind  that  usually  wreak  their 
havoc  in  large  cities. 

"Meta  Beggs  was  the  mask,  smooth  and  sterile,  of 
the  hunger  for  adornment,  for  gold  bands  and  jewels  and 
perfume,  for  goffered  linen,  and  draperies  of  silk  and 

[12] 


scarlet.  She  was  the  naked  idler  stained  with  antimony 
in  the  clay  courts  of  Sumeria;  the  Paphian  with  painted 
feet  loitering  on  the  roofs  of  Memphis  while  the  blocks 
of  red  sandstone  floated  sluggishly  down  the  Nile  for  the 
pyramid  of  Khufu  the  King;  she  was  the  flushed  voluptu 
ousness  relaxed  in  the  scented  spray  of  pagan  baths;  the 
woman  with  white-piled  and  powdered  hair  in  a  gold  shift 
of  Louis  XIV;  the  prostitute  with  a  pinched  waist  and 
great  flowing  sleeves  of  the  Maison  Doree.  She  was  as 
old  as  the  first  vice,  as  the  first  lust  budding  like  a  black 
blossom  in  the  morbidity  of  men  successful,  satiated. 

"  But  Lettice  was  older." 

Lettice,  Gordon  had  married  for  her  money,  and  it  is 
through  Meta  Beggs  that  Lettice  is  destroyed.  However 
Mr.  Hergesheimer's  tragedy  is  much  more  subtly  wrought 
than  anything  in  the  shape  of  a  successful  affair  between 
Gordon  and  Meta.  The  book  ends  not  with  Lettice's  de 
struction  but  with  Gordon's  dumb  and  bewildered  efforts 
to  turn  aside  from  Greenstream  those  springs  whence  his 
own  and  Lettice's  life  had  been  overwhelmed.  For  a 
time  it  looks  as  if  he  were  being  successful.  But  the 
morass  of  his  own  earlier  making  still  catches  his  feet. 
And  it  is  only  on  the  edge  of  ultimate  defeat  that  he  is 
permitted  one  gleam  of  success  that  is  real  and  one 
gleam  that  is  perhaps  phantasmal. 

A  sombre  and  moving  tale,  more  sombre  indeed  than 
anything  else  Mr.  Hergesheimer  has  done,  and  a  book 
that,  published  years  before  the  first  work  of  Johan 
Bojer  was  issued,  yet  reminds  us  curiously  of  that  au 
thor's  patient  tracing  of  the  moral  nets  that  snare  and 
hinder  our  footsteps. 

[13] 


THE  THREE  BLACK  PENNYS 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  with  the  one  exception  just 
noted  above,  Mr.  Hergesheimer  never  reminds  one  of 
any  other  author. 

Especially  original  in  conception  and  setting  is  his 
next  and  longest  book,  "  The  Three  Black  Pennys  " — 
which  is  also  a  stumbling  block  for  unwary  critics.  It 
is  the  story  of  three  men  in  succeeding  generations  of 
the  Penny  family,  iron-masters  of  the  Province  of  Penn 
sylvania  in  whose  veins  a  stream  of  black  blood  runs:  a 
stream  more  like  basalt  beneath  a  mountain  range  than 
like  blood,  for  it  never  mingles  but  outcrops,  and  the 
man  in  whom  it  shows  is  set  apart  from  others  by  his 
"  wildness,"  his  inability  to  mingle  with  the  pack,  to 
obey  herd  law,  to  be  happy  in  harness. 

And  yet  this  is  not  the  story  of  three  men,  but  of  one 
man  in  youth,  in  early  maturity  and  in  weakening  age. 
For  if  the  individual  passes  the  essential  identity  is  in 
the  blood. 

The  idea  is  a  striking  one,  so  much  so  that  almost  any 
competent  novelist  to  whom  it  had  been  given  would 
have  created  a  tour  de  force.  But,  however  his  later 
books  may  surpass  this  one,  it  will  surely  remain  the 
most  obvious  evidence  of  his  genius  that  Mr.  Hergeshei 
mer  did  not  make  a  mere  tour  de  force  out  of  this  idea 
but  a  strongly-pulsing  human  novel,  a  veritable  unity  in 
spite  of  the  triplicate  character  of  its  writing.  It  is  true 
that  he  gives  us  three  distinct  stories,  but  the  unity  of  the 
blood  of  the  Pennys,  the  racial  identity  (how  it  would 
have  delighted  Samuel  Butler  as  an  exemplification  of 

[14] 


his  theory  of  unconscious  memory),  that  as  well  as  the 
beautifully  worked  technical  devices  in  the  story  give  it 
a  unity  that  is  absolute.  And  yet  one  critic  —  trapped 
by  its  form  —  did  complain  that  this  was  really  a  book 
of  three  stories. 

We  begin  with  Howat,  the  son  of  Gilbert  Penny,  in 
1750.  In  Howat  the  streak  of  Welsh  blood  had  cropped 
out: 

"  Something  deep  and  instinctive  in  him  resisted  every 
effort  to  make  him  a  part  of  any  social  organization, 
however  admirable;  he  never  formed  any  personal  bonds 
with  humanity  in  particular.  He  had  grown  into  a  soli 
tary  being  within  whom  were  immovably  locked  all  the 
confidences,  the  spontaneous  expressions  of  self,  that 
bind  men  into  a  solidarity  of  common  failings  and 
hopes." 

Howat's  temper  is  displayed  against  a  background 
richer  than  we  are  wont  to  associate  with  the  early  be 
ginnings  of  America.  Howat's  father  had  known  the 
court  of  King  George  before  he  had  come  to  the  Prov 
ince,  and  at  the  time  the  story  opens  a  gentleman  of 
that  court,  Felix  Winscombe,  with  his  half  Polish  wife 
Ludowika,  is  visiting  Myrtle  Forge.  Howat's  love  for 
this  woman  is  the  theme  of  "  The  Furnace,"  the  first 
part  of  the  story.  As  a  very  far  background  we  have 
the  rather  Germanic  English  court.  Ludowika  is  in  full 
reaction  against  its  pettiness,  and  is  at  once  called  by 
the  American  wilderness  and  the  "  Endless  Mountains  " 
and  repelled  and  frightened  by  rough  Americans  and 
the  eternal  trip-hammer  which  keeps  time  to  the  Penny 
destinies.  But  that,  Howat  assures  her,  she  must  resign 

[15] 


herself  to  hearing  all  her  life  —  after  the  time  when  he 
shall  have  succeeded  in  disposing  of  Felix  Wins- 
combe.  .  .  . 

In  the  second  part,  "  The  Forge,"  the  black  blood  is 
older;  Jasper  Penny,  Howat's  great-grandson,  also  lives 
at  Myrtle  Forge,  where  one  day  he  is  nursing  his  un 
comfortable  thoughts  and  broken  arm.  He  had  gone 
to  Philadelphia  on  the  "  train  brigade,"  and  there  had 
been  an  accident.  His  mother  had  warned  him :  "  It 
isn't  safe  nor  sensible  with  a  good  horse  service  con 
venient.  But  then  you  always  have  been  a  knowing, 
headstrong  boy  and  man  ...  a  black  Penny." 

It  was  true,  he  thought,  as  he  remembered  the  diffi 
culty  he  had  always  found  in  adjusting  himself  to  or 
ganized  society.  His  marriage  had  been  a  failure,  and 
even  that  private  love  affair  in  which  he  had  found  a 
temporary  play  of  energy  and  "exercise  of  his  inborn 
contempt  for  the  evident  hypocrisy,  the  cowardice  of 
perfunctory  inhibitions  and  safe  morals  "  had  remained 
to  plague  him.  Now  he  had  determined  to  fix  the  limits 
of  his  responsibilities  to  mistress  and  child. 

But  this  he  finds  difficult,  and  when  he  meets  a  woman 
who,  old  as  he  is  getting,  awakens  love  in  him,  he  sees 
her  dragged  into  the  scandal  of  his  past.  But  by  now 
the  black  blood,  insurgent  as  ever,  is  no  longer  able  to 
carry  all  before  it.  Jasper  all  but  loses  out. 

So  thin,  in  fact,  is  the  blood  that  Jasper's  son  loses 
control  of  the  iron  industry,  and  Howat,  Jasper's  grand 
son,  finding  practical  life  distasteful,  returns  from  the 
New  York  of  the  'eighties  to  Myrtle  Forge  with  his  scrap 

[16] 


books  of  opera  programs  and  the  memories  which  they 
recall.  From  his  window: 

"  Below  on  the  right,  he  could  vaguely  see  the  broken 
bulk  of  what  had  been  Shadrach  Furnace,  the  ruined 
shape  of  the  past.  The  Pennys  no  longer  made  iron. 
His  father  had  marked  the  last  casting.  They  no  longer 
listened  to  the  beat  of  the  trip-hammer,  but  to  the  light 
rhythm  of  a  conductor's  baton;  they  heard,  in  place  of 
ringing  metal,  a  tenor's  grace  notes.  It  was  fitting  that 
the  last,  true  to  their  peculiar  inheritance,  should  be  a 
black  Penny.  He,  Howat,  was  that  —  the  ancient  Welsh 
blood  finally  gathered  in  a  cup  of  life  before  it  was 
spilled." 

And  the  blood  so  gathered  is  old;  no  longer  capable  of 
the  passions  of  its  youth  and  middle  age.  What  strength 
remains  in  the  Penny  family  is  in  Mariana,  Howat's 
cousin,  and  the  drama  of  the  third  book  is  made  by 
Howat's  dismayed  effort  to  hold  Mariana  to  his  own 
standards  and  to  prevent  her  from  keeping  the  man  she 
loves  — himself  a  Penny  by  Jasper's  mistress. 

Such  are  the  threads  of  the  story  and  Mr.  Hergesheimer 
weaves  them  into  a  glowing  and  significant  pattern. 
As  these  lives  blossom  and  pass,  their  motions  seem  fever 
ish  against  a  background  which  is  itself  not  still.  Not 
only  Myrtle  Forge  and  its  slowly  decaying  buildings, 
but  even  the  original  Howat's  ledger  with  its  memories, 
come  into  the  later  story  bringing  a  poignant  sense  of 
continuity:  the  reader  is  by  no  means  done  with  the 
youthful  Howat  when  Jasper  and  the  elder  Howat  enter. 
He  is  always  aware  that  what  he  is  reading  is  one  story, 

[17] 


not  three.  It  is  one  story  with  an  ever  deepening  coun 
terpoint  of  character,  contrast  and  narrative  rhythm. 
And  it  is  a  tale  whose  women,  Ludowika,  the  passion 
ate;  Susan  Brunden,  the  spiritual;  and  Mariana,  the  self 
consciously  alive  —  are  worthy  to  stand  alongside  the  men 
whom  they  successively  intrigue  or  shock. 

THE  SHORTER  STORIES 

Mr.  Hergesheimer  is  pre-eminently  a  master  in  the 
form  that  hovers  between  the  short  story  and  the  "  nou- 
velle,"  and  in  "  Gold  and  Iron "  the  reader  who  has 
loved  his  Pennsylvania  iron  founders  will  meet  again 
their  like  —  in  "  Tubal  Cain  "  and  the  lover  of  "  Java 
Head  "  will  find  something  of  the  Salem  atmosphere  in 
Cottarsport  and  one  of  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  most  charac 
teristic  and  delightful  women  in  Honora  Canderay,  who 
is  not  afraid  of  a  recently  returned  Argonaut  even  when 
he  is  drunk.  From  these  three  tales  perhaps  we  may 
make  one  quotation  to  show  their  author's  command  of 
a  landscape  magic  that  is  at  once  pictorial  and  lyrical. 
Here  in  Florida  Bay  is  the  background  against  which  a 
love-story  at  once  tender  and  melodramatically  set,  is 
played  out: 

"The  water,  as  clear  and  hardly  darker  than  the 
darkening  air,  lay  like  a  great  amethyst  clasped  by  its 
dim  corals  and  the  arm  of  the  land.  The  glossy  foliage 
that,  with  the  exception  of  a  small  silver  beach,  choked 
the  shore  might  have  been  stamped  from  metal.  It  was, 
John  Woolfolk  suddenly  thought,  amazingly  still.  The 
atmosphere,  too,  was  peculiarly  heavy,  languorous.  It 
was  laden  with  the  scents  of  exotic  flowering  trees;  he 

[18] 


recognized  the  smooth,  heavy  odours  of  oleanders  and  the 
clearer,  higher  breath  of  orange  blossoms." 

It  is  in  that  bay  and  in  the  ruined  house  on  its  edge, 
with  windows  "  broken  in  —  they  resembled  the  blank 
eyes  of  the  dead  " —  that  a  beautiful  love  story  and  at 
the  same  time  perhaps  the  most  melodramatic  tale  that 
Mr.  Hergesheimer  has  written  has  its  setting. 

"  The  Happy  End  "  is  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  happy  title 
for  a  book  of  seven  stories  —  short  stories  the  endings  of 
which  are  happy  in  the  artistic  sense  as  well  as  in  the 
sense  which  may  have  intrigued  the  reader  into  buying  the 
book.  Mr.  Hergesheimer  has  a  sensitive  artistic  con 
science,  and  also  a  philosophical  idea  of  what  consti 
tutes  happiness,  so  his  reader  need  not  fear  that  in  this 
book  he  will  meet  pot-boilers  —  despite  the  witty  intro 
duction  in  which  the  author's  grocer  is  mentioned. 

The  stories  in  this  book  are  all  laid  in  America  except 
the  one  concerning  a  young  Italian  girl's  very  tem 
porary  infatuation  for  a  Spanish  bull  fighter  —  with 
its  wonderful  bit  of  insight  into  feminine  character  which 
comes  just  before  a  very  lurid  ending.  Two  of  them 
recall  the  scenes  of  "  Mountain  Blood,"  and  of  these 
one  has  so  happy  an  ending  that  the  author  detaches 
it  and  prints  it  as  a  prelude  —  the  result  amply  justify 
ing  him. 

Who  would  ever  have  thought  to  see  Mr.  Hergesheimer 
delving  into  the  field  of  the  psychology  of  religion? 
Yet  he  has  made  a  really  thrilling  story  out  of  the  most 
unpromisingly  evangelical  kind  of  religion  and  it  reads 
as  convincingly  as  a  case  from  James  s  "  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience." 

[19] 


In  case  the  reader  is  a  sinner  and  not  interested  in  that 
let  us  add  that  there  is  a  beautiful  revolver  in  the  story 
too. 

Out  for  what  he  frankly  tells  us  is  the  pleasure  of 
the  chase,  Mr.  Hergesheimer  has  in  these  stories  always 
given  us  a  run  for  our  money,  has  always  captured  a 
genuine  thrill,  and  by  fair  means. 

JAVA  HEAD 

Mr.  Hergesheimer's  English  reputation  was  begun  by 
the  "  Three  Black  Pennys "  and  he  definitely  arrived 
there  with  the  publication  of  "  Java  Head,"  Mr.  Gosse's 
enthusiastically  expressed  admiration  for  it  undoubtedly 
helping  to  "  put  it  over  "  with  a  public  always  keenly 
appreciative  of  stories  with  a  sea  flavour. 

"  Java  Head  "  is  a  fast-moving  story.  The  most  un 
sophisticated  reader  will  enjoy  it,  and  yet  only  the 
sophisticated  will  be  able  to  see  what  a  beautiful  piece 
of  work  it  really  is.  The  scene  is  Salem  when  the  older 
and  slower  trading  ships  were  about  to  disappear  before 
the  fast  clippers  —  to  be  definite,  in  the  presidency  of 
the  late  Mr.  Polk  —  and  the  picture  of  Salem  and  its 
autocrats  of  the  sea  is  the  most  obvious  feature  of  the 
book.  It  is  a  clearly  drawn  and  colourful  picture,  one 
more  addition  to  the  author's  re-creation  of  the  older 
aspects  of  American  life.  It  is  a  picture  so  vivid  that 
the  exotic  quality  of  the  Manchu  lady  who  lends  it  so 
much  colour  does  not  seem  exotic  and  does  not  over 
shadow  the  rest  of  it. 

There  are  action  and  feeling  as  well  as  colour  in  the 
book.  And  the  balance  between  the  pictorial  and  the 

[20] 


psychological  is  beautifully  kept.  The  human  drama 
begins  in  earnest  when  Gerrit  Ammidon,  captain  in  the 
service  of  his  father's  shipping  firm,  comes  home  from 
the  Orient  with  a  Manchu  wife  —  to  the  scandal  of  Sa 
lem  and  his  family. 

Gerrit  had,  however,  married  his  wife  with  the  full 
concurrence  of  those  concerned  and  in  full  knowledge  of 
the  sort  of  reception  he  might  expect  at  home.  In  so 
far  as  those  expectations  are  gratified  the  comedy  is 
worth  watching  and  Mr.  Hergesheimer  lets  us  see  it. 

This  aspect  we  leave  soon,  however,  for  the  situation  is 
inherently  tragic,  and  two  of  the  instruments  of  the 
tragedy  are  a  Salem  girl,  born  out  of  wedlock,  and  her 
uncle  discharged  from  the  Chinese  service  of  a  shipping 
firm.  Nettie  Voller,  the  granddaughter  of  an  old  sea- 
mate  of  Jeremy  Ammidon,  has  felt  the  wrath  of  her  pious 
grandfather  —  directed  equally  at  her  mother  and  her 
self  —  and  she  has  also  felt  the  social  ban  of  self-right 
eous  Salem.  Gerrit,  in  a  healthy  reaction  against  that 
sort  of  thing,  had  gone  out  of  his  way  to  befriend  the 
girl,  and  had  been  on  the  point  of  falling  in  love  with 
her  when  the  old  grandfather  —  thinking  that  he  had 
already  done  so,  and  not  imagining  that  it  could  be  an 
honest  love  —  forbade  him  the  house.  Gerrit  left  the 
house,  sailed  for  China  immediately  and  when  he  came 
back  he  was  married. 

By  that  time  Nettie  Voller's  uncle,  Edward  Dunsack, 
had  also  come  back,  a  victim  of  opium.  Half  oriental 
ized,  he  thought  that  in  Salem  he  could  forget  the  opium 
and  the  lure  of  the  East.  But  the  sight  of  the  Manchu 
lady,  bringing  back  not  only  his  taste  for  opium  but  his 

[21] 


orientalized  taste  in  women,  was  the  last  factor  in  a  series 
of  impulses  that  caused  him  to  plot  against  Gerrit. 

An  alliance,  he  thought,  between  his  niece  and  Gerrit 
would  put  him  and  his  on  a  social  parity  with  the 
Ammidons,  to  say  nothing  of  renovating  his  family's 
shattered  fortunes.  And  the  separation  between  Gerrit 
and  his  wife  that  this  would  involve  would  serve  Ed 
ward  in  his  desire  for  Tao  Yuen. 

All  of  which,  in  summary,  sounds  melodramatic.  But 
it  is  only  the  framework  of  the  story  that  is  really  that. 
The  point  of  interest  is  in  the  reactions  of  Gerrit  to  the 
two  women,  and  in  Tao  Yuen's  attitude  to  the  situation 
whose  danger  she  is  not  long  in  sensing. 

Tao  Yuen  is  not  only  a  high-born  woman  whose  every 
thought  and  gesture  must  be  calculated  and  measure  up 
to  the  ideals  and  standards  of  her  class,  but  she  is  really 
in  love,  and  she  is  read  in  the  sacred  books  of  her  land. 
She  is,  naturally,  a  non-resistant,  but  hers  is  a  sophisti 
cated,  reasoned  non-resistance,  the  opposite  of  the  spine- 
lessness  which  we  Occidentals  associate  with  that  word. 

And  here,  in  this  absolutely  unknown  and  disliked 
environment,  her  one  resource  is  her  philosophy.  She 
lives  literally  "  by  the  book."  She  sees  in  Edward 
Dunsack  a  man  undone  because  he,  a  westerner,  became 
half  orientalized.  She  resolves  that  she  will  not  make 
the  corresponding  mistake.  In  the  end  her  attitude  leads 
to  what  we  would  call  tragedy,  but  from  Tao  Yuen's 
standpoint  it  was  simply  a  well  considered  step  in  ac 
cordance  with  the  rules  of  the  game. 

But  why,  after  the  emotional  climax  which  she  sup 
plies,  is  there  something  that  some  readers  will  call  an 

[22] 


anti-climax?  It  is  not  Gerrit  Ammidon's  change  of 
attitude  toward  Nettie.  It  is  the  love  affair  of  two 
other  and  minor  characters  —  an  unsuccessful  one  be 
cause  the  man  lacks  spine.  Why,  one  asks,  this  adden 
dum?  And  then  it  dawns  upon  us  that  Mr.  Hergesheimer 
seeks  by  thus  ending  his  book  on  a  minor  tragic  note  to 
bring  us  to  the  fullest  understanding  of  the  major  note  of 
his  real  climax.  For  the  motto  on  this  title  page  tells  us, 
on  the  authority  of  Chwang-Tze,  that  "  It  is  only  the 
path  of  pure  simplicity  which  guards  and  preserves  the 
spirit."  And  certainly  between  the  non-resistant  Tao 
Yuen  and  the  non-resisting,  but  not  simple,  American 
lover  there  is,  at  the  end  of  this  book,  not  the  difference 
between  a  dead  and  a  living  body  but  thai  between  a 
saved  and  a  lost  soul. 

LINDA  CONDON 

We  come  now  to  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  latest  book, 
"  Linda  Condon,"  a  story  which,  curiously  enough,  is  both 
a  realistic  tale  and  a  further  searching  out  of  that  gospel 
of  eternal  beauty  and  eternal  love  which  the  author 
adumbrated  in  his  first  book. 

Were  Mr.  Hergesheimer  asked  to  sum  up  the  theme 
of  "  Linda  Condon  "  in  a  sentence  he  would  —  rightly 
—  refuse,  but  if  one  were  to  do  it  for  him  one  might 
come  nearest  a  very  difficult  thing  to  phrase  by  the  fol 
lowing  quotation  descriptive  of  that  general  attitude  to 
ward  the  world  which  is  called  Platonism: 

"  It  is  only  the  born  connoisseur  of  things  seen  and 
temporal  who  is  likely  to  aspire  to,  and  is  able  to  attain 
to,  and  without  abating  his  love  of  things  seen  and  tern- 

[23] 


poral,  is  able  to  hold  fast  by  that  love  or  faith  which 
is  the  certainty  of  things  unseen  and  eternal." 

In  this  story  a  sculptor  is  made  great  by  his  love  for 
a  girl,  Linda  Condon,  a  love  which  Linda,  by  reason  of 
certain  associations  and  memories,  cannot  return  in  its 
first  manifestation  of  passion.  In  fact  she  flies  from  it 
into  the  arms  of  another  man,  who,  like  Pleydon,  the 
sculptor,  is  much  older  than  herself. 

It  is  this  finding  in  Linda,  beautiful  and  inscrutable 
as  her  blue  eyes  look  out  from  a  bang  of  black  hair  cut 
straight  across  her  forehead,  with  a  scrupulousness  of 
person  and  attire  more  inborn  than  learned  from  her 
beautiful  but  debauched  mother  —  it  is  this  finding  in 
her  of  the  beauty  which  will  not  give  itself  to  the  fur 
nace  of  his  senses  but  kindles  his  spirit,  that  is  the  mak 
ing  of  Pleydon.  Until  he  met  her,  beauty  to  him  meant 
emotional  debauch.  In  her  he  finds  the  beauty  personi 
fied  that,  to  be  sure,  passes,  but  is  ever  renewed,  and 
the  finding  makes  him  a  great  sculptor.  Linda  herself  is 
but  dimly  aware  of  what  is  taking  place,  for  she  is  emo 
tionally  immature  and  almost  illiterate.  But  once,  in 
her  girlhood,  a  dying  man  had  talked  to  her  of  the 
Platonic  arid  Petrarchan  ideal  of  woman  as  an  inspirer 
of  beauty,  and  gradually,  not  until  she  had  once  attempted 
to  be  to  Pleydon  the  other  kind  of  solace,  she  learns  the 
part  she  has  played  in  his  life  —  learns  how  his  love  for 
her  had  made  eternal  or  at  least  had  made  incarnate 
for  all  the  world  to  see,  the  reality  of  her  beauty,  the 
beauty  of  which  her  "  looks  "  were  but  a  passing  symbol. 

Let  no  sentimental  reader  imagine  that  this  means  that 
Pleydon  became  famous  for  doing  a  portrait  bust  of 

[24] 


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Ctxxd 


A    PAGE    OF   THE    MANUSCRIPT    OF   "JAVA    HEAD" 


Linda.     No,  Mr.  Hergesheimer  goes  immeasurably  deeper 
than  that. 

IN  CONCLUSION 

In  this  story  the  author  has  really  brought  American 
fiction  into  a  realm  where  heretofore  it  has  hardly  dared 
to  enter.  He  has  held  up  to  us  the  subtle  forces  of 
sexual  attraction  and  their  "  sublimation  "  into  art,  and 
he  has  done  so  not  in  the  often  offensive  manner  of 
the  psycho-analyst,  but  simply  without  any  parade  of 
"  scientific  psychology  "  in  a  manner  that  the  most  unso 
phisticated  reader  can  follow,  and  from  these  erotic  and 
spiritual  strands  he  has  woven  a  delicate  and  yet  defi 
nite  pattern,  beautiful,  original,  and  owing  little  to  pre 
cedent. 

And  having  done  that  in  his  present  work,  having  as 
before  in  each  of  his  books  made  a  definite  advance,  Mr. 
Hergesheimer  remains  a  figure  of  surpassing  interest  in 
that  he  is  alone  among  the  contemporary  novelists  in 
his  refusal  to  rely  for  aid  upon  current  events,  current 
"  social  tendencies  "  and  current  cant  of  any  sort.  With 
his  eye  set  upon  beauty  and  the  movement  of  human  life 
from  refinement  to  refinement  of  emotional  experience 
Mr.  Hergesheimer  stands  for  further  flights  which  will 
be  as  unpredictable  as  ever.  In  fact  he  is  the  only  un 
predictable  American  novelist  we  have,  and  that  is  one 
very  good  reason  why  he  is  the  greatest. 


[25] 


JOSEPH    HERGESHEIMER 

An  Advertisement  by  his  Publisher 

64~W~  KNOW  of  no  contemporary  writer  so  capable  of 
charming  from  cold  type  the  graces,  the  villainies 
1      and  the  simple  conventions  of  almost  forgotten 
days." —  Chicago  Daily  News. 

"  A  writer  whose  utterances  grow  increasingly  signifi 
cant." —  Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

"  In  the  world  of  contemporary  American  fiction, 
moreover,  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  style  is  a  consolation  and 
a  stay.  .  .  .  He  is  an  artist  through  and  through." — 
The  Nation. 

"  There  is  one  man  writing  in  America  who  has  an 
uncanny  power  of  imprisoning  in  words  fragrances,  tex 
tures,  colors,  whose  pen  is  a  five  sensed  human  thing. 
He  can  paint  in  words  the  sunshine  of  Sorolla,  weave  a 
Gobelin  tapestry,  guide  tingling  finger  tips  over  a  eea 
shell's  satin,  release  the  embalmed  fragrance  of  a  jas 
mine,  wet  lips  with  the  acrid  spray  of  a  sea  too  eager 
in  its  rollings.  That  man  is  Joseph  Hergesheimer.  .  .  . 
One  of  the  few  great  novelists  of  the  period. " —  Chicago 
Tribune. 

"  The  easy  and  obvious  are  things  which,  apparently, 
Mr.  Hergesheimer  will  never  do.  ...  His  ambition  is 
noble,  he  spares  no  pains  whatever  to  make  his  work 
worthy  of  it." —  Brooklyn  Eagle. 

"  There  is  simply  not  an  English  author  of  his  genera 
tion  —  with  the  exception  of  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence  — 
who  writes  so  brilliantly." —  Rebecca  West  in  The  New 
Statesman. 

"  Mr.  Hergesheimer,  far  less  unsurely  than  any  other 
American  writer  of  today,  gives  us  hope  for  the  future 
of  American  literature." — Detroit  Sunday  News. 

[26] 


SAN  CRISTOBAL  DE  LA  HABANA 

Published  November  1920 

**  /^  S  a  book  of  travel  dealing  with  a  Spanish- 
/  %  American  country,  the  volume  is  a  rarity,  in 

.A.  J^  that  it  says  not  a  word  of  trade,  holds  not  a 
figure  of  commercial  statistics,  breathes  not  a  sound  of 
partisan  politics  and  factional  intrigue  .  .  .  And  be 
cause  an  artist  wrote  it,  it  is  a  book  not  only  about  a  city 
but  about  the  soul  of  a  city  and  the  personality  of  the 
man  who  travelled  to  a  new  nook  of  himself  via  Cuba's 
capitol." — Christian  Science  Monitor. 

"It  is  a  delightful  book,  and  its  format  is  a  triumph — 
a  chalice  made  by  an  artificer  who  appreciated  the  wine 
it  was  to  hold." — Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"One  of  the  most  remarkable  and  at  the  same  time  one 
of  the  most  fascinating  books  of  travel  in  the  language." 
— Philadelphia  Ledger. 

"As  unusual  a  bit  of  autobiography  and  self-revela 
tion  as  Conrad's  'A  Personal  Record.' ''  — New  York 
Globe. 

"It  glows  with  a  great  artistic  sincerity;  it  has  the 
wistful  charm  of  any  authentic  record  of  a  beauty  that 
is  evanescent,  elusive,  fugitive.  Reaches  the  full  ma- 
turnity  of  a  perfect  style." — Detroit  News. 

"Hergesheimer  lifts  himself  to  lyrical  heights  in  this 
book.  His  delicate  and  colorful  prose  was  never  better." 
— H.  L.  Mencken  in  The  Smart  Set. 

SAN  CRISTOBAL  DE  LA  HABANA   has  also  been  published 
in  England  by    William  Heinemann. 

[27] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Published  October  1919 


**  "1  |"IS  book,  as  a  whole  is,  like  Linda  herself,  '  re 
mote  and  faintly  wistful,'  enormously  simpli 
fied  in  method  despite  its  contacts  with  the 
roughness  and  the  muffled  tumult  of  life,  slim  and  sweet, 
and  as  full  of  grace  as  a  gavotte  by  Handel.  .  .  .  Her 
story  and  her  character,  both  fragile  enough  by  the 
more  robust  and  perhaps  more  rational  tests  of  life  and 
art,  are  of  a  very  high  and  singularly  flawless  distinc 
tion." —  The  Nation. 

"  Linda  has  in  her  what  Joseph  Conrad  attributes  to 
his  Dona  Rita  — *  something  of  the  woman  of  all  ages  '• — 
but  Conrad  only  succeeded  in  picturing  a  wraith;  Linda 
lives  and  breathes.  A  great  book." —  Chicago  Daily 
News. 

".  .  .  Linda  Condon,  which  discomforts  me  quite  as 
poignantly  by  exposing  to  me  my  poverty  in  phrases 
sufficiently  noble  to  apply  to  this  wholly  admirable 
book." —  James  Branch  Cabell,  in  The  Bookman. 

"  Linda  Condon  has  much  of  the  mystic  beauty  of  Dona 
Rita  of  '  The  Arrow  of  Gold,'  the  deathless  charm  of  a 
few  great  women  in  literature." —  Chicago  Tribune. 

".  .  .  reveals  another  phase  of  his  surprising  power 
as  a  novelist.  .  .  .  Perhaps  the  deepest  and  most  remark 
able  study  of  character  which  he  has  as  yet  prepared  for 
the  printed  page." — New  York  World. 

LINDA   CONDON  has  also  been  published  in  England 
by  William  Heinemann. 

[28] 


THE  THREE  BLACK  PENNYS 

Published  September  1917 
Now  in  its  seventh  edition 


A 


44  A  N  altogether  notable  book,  a  novel  that  should 
be  read  by  those  people  who  pride  themselves 
on  reading  only  the  few  best  things  in  fic 
tion." —  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"  An  unusual  novel,  to  be  read  slowly,  thoughtfully 
and  with  a  sense  of  luxury." — London  Times. 

"  The  book  is  finely  done,  and  the  three  black  Pennys 
live  as  only  rarely  happens  in  the  characters  of  fic 
tion." — Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

"  A  work  of  shining  distinction.  The  book  has  a  pas 
sion  that  is  most  compelling,  a  deep-running  intensity. 
It  has  a  darkling  beauty." —  Reedy 's  Mirror. 

"  He  has  here  fashioned  a  novel  out  of  distinctively 
American  life  on  an  original  pattern,  caught  the  very 
air  and  flavor  of  three  widely  separated  epochs  of  our 
history,  evolved  living  men  and  women,  and  told  the 
story  of  their  lives  with  skill  and  art  and  understanding. 
One  hurries  on  from  part  to  part  as  interested  as  if  its 
scenes  were  all  laid  within  a  single  lifetime.  Every  one 
of  its  many  characters,  in  each  of  its  divisions,  is  touched 
with  life  and  glows  with  verity.  The  background  of  fur 
nace  fires  and  glowing  metal  is  always  interesting,  and  the 
social  environment  of  the  three  central  figures,  each  in  its 
own  generation,  is  marked  with  the  truth  of  its  own  time. 
A  book  to  arouse  interest,  inspire  thought,  and  provoke 
discussion." — New  York  Times. 

THE  THREE  BLACK  PENNYS  has  also  been  published  in  Eng 
land  by  William  Heinemann;  in  Sweden  by  Albert  Bonnier; 
and  on  the  Continent  in  English  by  T.  Nelson  and  Sons.  It  is 
to  be  published  in  Denmark  and  Norway  by  the  firm  of 
Gyldendal 

[29] 


JAVA   HEAD 

Published  January  1919 
Now  in  its  sixth  edition 


4  *  ~|f  T  is  in  all  respects  an  unusual  and  arresting 
story,  and  the  lasting  impression  one  carries  away 

JL.  is  the  richness  of  atmosphere  with  which  every 
page  is  filled." — Los  Angeles  Evening  Journal. 

"  A  thing  so  consummate  of  its  kind  as  almost  to  make 
one  tremble  for  the  author  of  it,  in  the  wonder  how  he  can 
either  excel  it  or  endure  failure  to  excel  it." —  Wilson 
Follett. 

"  One  perceives  at  the  close  that  there  is  beauty  of 
design  in  the  structure  of  the  whole,  and  this,  springing 
from  the  author's  philosophy  of  life,  reinforces  the 
aesthetic  appeal  of  a  memorable  novel." — London 
Nation. 

"Romantic,  colorful,  mysterious;  it  is  a  dramatic  in 
terpretation  of  certain  fascinating  phases  of  life  as  it 
was  in  the  eyes  of  the  masters  of  the  American  merchant 
marine  at  the  beginning  of  the  great  clipper  ship  era,  a 
brilliant  and  fragrant  memory  of  the  port  of  Salem 
when  that  city  was  still  rich  with  the  traffic  of  the  East 
Indies." —  Chicago  Daily  News. 

"The  most  unsophisticated  reader  will  enjoy  it,  but 
only  the  sophisticated  will  be  able  to  see  how  beautiful 
a  piece  of  work  it  really  is." —  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"  A  strange,  most  unusual,  beautiful,  intriguing  story. 
...  It  is  quite  a  wonderful  story,  this  *  Java  Head,'  not 
less  strong  or  interesting  because  of  the  exquisiteness 
with  which  it  is  told  from  the  beginning  to  the  end." — 
New  York  Globe. 

JAVA  HEAD  has  also   been  published  in  England  by   William 

Heinemann;  in  Sweden  by  Albert  Bonnier;  and  is  to  be  published 

in  Denmark  and  Norway  by  the  firm  of  Gyldendal. 

[30]" 


WILD    ORANGES 

TUBAL   GAIN 
THE    DARK    FLEECE 

First  published  in  1918  in  one  volume  under  the  title 
"Gold  and  Iron' 

WILD  ORANGES  is  the  story  of  a  man  and  a  woman  in 
the  wilds  of  the  Georgia  coast.  "A  magnificent  story. 
Few  more  powerful  tales  of  the  fantastic  decay  of  the 
tropics  have  been  written." — New  York  Call. 

In  TUBAL  CAIN  the  early  blast  furnaces  of  Pennsyl 
vania  are  the  background  of  the  story  of  Alexander 
Huling's  rise. 

THE  DARK  FLEECE  is  the  story  of  a  forty-niner  who 
returns  to  his  New  England  home.  "The  depiction  of 
Honora  Candaray  is  a  piece  of  literary  artistry." — New 
York  Times. 

THE   HAPPY   END 

Published  August  1919.     Now  in  its  third  edition 

CONTENTS:  Lonely  Valleys /The  Egyptian  Chariot/ 
The  Flower  of  Spain  /  Tol'able  David  /  Bread  /  Rose 
mary  Roselle  /  The  Thrush  in  the  Hedge. 

CE  more  Joseph  Hergesheimer  scores  a  de- 
cided  success  and  makes  more  secure  his  posi- 
tion  in  the  first  rank  of  American  writers  of 
fiction." — Newark  Evening  News. 

"  Each  tale  has  some  peculiar  grace,  and  a  quickening 
appeal  to  the  imagination.  The  collection  is  a  real  addi 
tion  to  the  work  of  a  writer  whose  utterances  grow  in 
creasingly  significant. —  The  Dial. 

Both  these  books  have  also  been  published  in  England  by 
William  Heinemann, 

[31] 


THE   LAY    ANTHONY 

New,  revised  version,  published  October  1919 
Now  in  its  second  edition 

44  TTIHE  LAY  ANTHONY'  reveals  his  art  at  its 

highest    achievement.  .  .  .  has    never    been 

JL.       truer    and    more   impressive   than    it    is    in 

telling  this  story.     The  reader  will   find  it  a  veritable 

wonder  piece  of  fiction." —  St.  Louis  Dispatch. 

"  It  has  all  the  originality,  dramatic  intensity  and 
poetry  of  Swinnerton's  '  Nocturne.'  And,  moreover,  it  is 
as  essentially  American  as  that  London  idyl  is  English." 
— The  Knickerbocker  Press. 

"  It  is  only  at  the  completion  that  the  knowledge  comes 
of  how  beautiful  a  thing  it  is." — Cleveland  Plain  Dealer. 

MOUNTAIN    BLOOD 

New,  revised  version,  published  October  1919 

44  4-m   FOUNTAIN  BLOOD  '  is  a  book  of  dear,  pei- 

lucid  and  rarely  exquisite  pictures  of  the 
wild  winsomeness  of  southern  mountains; 
it  is  a  book  of  bizarre  characters  which  are  stamped  on 
our  memory  by  brief,  unforgetable  descriptions;  but 
mostly  it  is  a  book  of  simply-subtle  and  subtly-simple 
artistry.  Its  beauty  is  the  beauty  of  chaste,  clean,  cold 
things;  its  tragedy  is  the  tragedy  of  blind,  struggling  man 
overwhelmed  by  the  elemental  forces  which  mock  at  our 
puny  efforts  to  control  them.  If  Mr.  Hergesheimer  had 
written  no  other  book  than  this,  he  would  be  a  distin 
guished  figure  in  American  literature." — Detroit  Sunday 
News. 

"Mountain  Blood"  and  "The  Lay  Anthony9'  are  to  be 
published  in  England  by  William  Heinemann. 

[32T 


M 


MR.    HERGESHEIMER'S    NEWEST 
BOOK 


CYTHEREA 

Published  January  1922 

"  /^>|  YTHEREA,"  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  first  novel  in 
over  two  years,  while  showing  a  new  aspect  of 
^-^  his  genius,  will  not  fail  to  give  great  satisfac 
tion  to  the  thousands  of  his  admirers  who  for  so  long 
have  eagerly  been  awaiting  a  new  book  by  him. 

The  story  is  so  modern  that  it  could  only  have  been 
written  today,  but  its  subject  is  as  old  as  the  legends  of 
Venus.  It  is  actually  a  legend  of  the  Goddess  of  Love, 
but  its  setting  is  wholly  contemporary:  Lee  Randon  lost 
in  the  fascination  of  Cytherea,  and  his  wife  Fanny;  the 
silvery  Mina  Raff  of  motion  pictures  and  Morris  Peyton; 
Savina  Grove,  relentlessly  vital,  with  her  conventional 
William — are  people  of  our  own  experience  and  country. 

"Cytherea,"  however,  is  a  novel  of  love  rather  than  of 
shifting  forms  and  expressions:  the  timeless  web  of  pas 
sion  woven  incidentally  in  a  design  of  familiar  figures 
and  scenes.  $2.50  net. 

There  is  also  a  special  edition  of  two  hundred  and  seventy  copies, 

printed   on    White   Stratford   Laid  paper   and    bound   in   orange 

buckram  with  uncut  edges. 


[33] 


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